The crisis of being adjunct/ The crisis of adjunctification

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Me and my Doppelganger

Attached is a PowerPoint presentation that I created for a panel on adjunct issues at the San Diego Social Justice Conference held at San Diego City College in March. I got the idea for the presentation by trying to think of a way to illustrate an important difference between full and part-timers. I really wanted to focus on salary issues, but with the complexities of the salary schedules, it is difficult to figure out how to articulate such a comparison. The real breakthrough came when I decided to personalize things, and instead of trying to figure out how disadvantaged adjunct as a whole are compared to full-timers as a whole, I thought I would just focus on my particular circumstances. As I note in the presentation, I interviewed for a full-time position at Miramar in 2008. I didn’t get the position (I don’t think I would be blogging here if I had), but it set up a very interesting “What if?” scenario that served as the basis for my presentation. Since I have distributed this presentation to various groups, a number of issues have been raised, and I would like to address some of them. First, despite what some of my full-time colleagues seem to think, this presentation is not intended as an attack on full-timers. My goal is not to drag full-timers to the level of part-timers, but instead to raise part-timers to the level of full-timers, and then try to raise everyone higher. However, without a clear understanding of the issues ( which my presentation attempts to achieve) this would not be possible. Second, I don’t feel any resentment towards the person who did get that job. I work with that individual, and I have the highest respect for him as a professor. Furthermore, I think that one could argue that had I been given the job over this person, an injustice would have occurred. At the time I interviewed in 2008, I basically had no teaching experience at the Community College level. By contrast, the person who did get the job had been a long-time adjunct in the philosophy department at Miramar. I think this is what we ideally would like to see: full-time positions going to the adjuncts who have “put in their time” in the department in question, instead of bringing in outsiders simply because they have a fancy degree or something. Here is the presentation: SD SJC Presentation I hope you enjoy it, and if you have any questions or concerns please leave them in the comments or email me directly.